~ children's author, Andrew Guile

Monthly Archives: October 2016

What a cracking debut. Anything starting on an airship is going to hook me right from the start! I love steampunk.

After the explosive prologue, where Lily’s father’s airship is shot down and he’s feared lost, we meet Lily at school showing her feisty character and protecting the mechanical maid who the other girls treat appallingly. We get a feel for her as a character very quickly and soon the reader is immersed in a world of ‘mechanicals’ and ‘mechanimals’ many of whom were designed and built by Lily’s late father. Lily is desperate to find any news of him, refusing to accept that he is dead. Meanwhile, she and her human sidekick, Robert and her mechanical fox, Malkin set out to find answers and to discover the lengths that their unknown nemesis will go to to possess the Cogheart.
I listened to this on audio and thoroughly enjoyed it. Peter Bunzl has created a wonderful world of aeronauts, airships and villainy. Okay, the discovery of who the bad guy is was no surprise at all (it was pretty obvious from the start) but children probably won’t spot the early hint and will love the world building, action and the fabulous Lily who is a truly wonderful character. Highly recommended and an impressive debut.

So, my new book The Mad Moon Mission has just had it’s first proof read. This is the first time I have ever had a book go through this ‘full’ publishing process – structural edits, re-writes, copy edit, typesetting, proof reading, etc. I originally thought that the book should be pretty perfect by the proof read stage.

Wrong!

Not only do I have a fair few text issues to review but I discovered that seven of the one hundred and fifty drawings were wrong! Schoolboy errors too. Two characters change what they are wearing part way through the story but the drawings didn’t change with them and now need re-doing. Massive drama? No, not really – Curt Walstead (the illustrator), as always, has been great and will do the revisions in super-quick time but it really does reinforce the importance of going through the process. Both Curt and I checked the drawings carefully and noted a number that needed alteration but we both missed this one.

So, I’ve added to this post a drawing from the book that will now never be used. Let Mr Finny’s ‘stormy face’ serve as a reminder of how you may feel later, after your book is published and you only then discover a typo or a continuity error!